Discipline Priest Healing Mythic+ Tips — Battle for Azeroth (BfA) 8.1

1. Discipline Priest in Mythic+

Discipline Priests have received several changes that make the spec more interesting in dungeons. Our damage output, while still providing healing, is second to none. With dungeon design straying away from several one-shot mechanics, Discipline is now better suited to playing in a competitive Mythic+ setting.

1.1. Discipline Priest Mythic+ Rotation

Discipline's healing rotation remains the same for Normal, Heroic, and Mythic dungeons. For more information about the Discipline Priest healing rotation, refer back to the Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities page.

1.2. Discipline Priest Utility

Discipline Priests have a unique toolkit that can allow us to heal, while also providing a substantial amount of damage. For Mythic+, added damage is a strong factor when considering any healer and Discipline does not need to sacrifice much healing to contribute damage, making us a very enticing choice for pushing Mythic+ keys. In addition to the damage we provide while healing, we also bring several damage reduction cooldowns, good personal cooldowns, and the ability to dispel enemies.

• Rapture is a cooldown the will buff any Power Word: Shield's after you cast the spell. Because of the increased absorb from your shields you this can be used to prevent a single player from dying by casting it repeatedly on them, or to blanket your party with them.
• Desperate Prayer is a personal cooldown that increases your health by 25% and also heals you for that amount. This cooldown is ideal to use in a pinch and has a relatively short cooldown.
• Pain Suppression is a 40% damage reduction cooldown that can, and should, be used proactively when possible. It can also be used reactively, specifically if you have the Moment of Repose Azerite trait. One situation to use this cooldown in would be when you can anticipate damage to prevent your tank from being 1-shot, such as by bosses on Tyrannical.
• Power Word: Barrier provides you with a great group-wide damage reduction cooldown, provided people stand within it. Use this on high group damage in boss encounters or during trash.
• Fade can provide a substantial absorb shield, assuming you have the Sanctum Azerite trait. This trait can turn your Fade into a personal cooldown, in addition to the threat removal mechanic it provides as baseline.
• Dispel Magic allows you to dispel beneficial buffs from enemies. This is extremely useful in Battle for Azeroth dungeons, as a lot of mob packs in many of the dungeons tend to have some kind of buff that they cast on themselves. While this is more important in some dungeons compared to others, it is still very valuable to be able to do it.
• Purify dispels all Magic and Disease effects from friendly targets.
• Mass Dispel remains a really useful ability to have in our arsenal. Dispelling is very important in Battle for Azeroth, and Mass Dispel allows for both offensive and defensive dispels. The fact that you can dispel multiple enemies or friendly targets with just one global is situationally very strong, although Mass Dispel does have a fairly lengthy 45-second cooldown now.
• Leap of Faith pulls a friendly party member towards you. It is not that useful generally, but can sometimes save someone.
• Mind Control is good to deal with Bolstering if you really do not want a mob in the pack to get Bolstering stacks. While mobs are Mind Controlled, they can not get affected by Bolstering.
• Psychic Scream fears up to 5 enemies close to you for 8 seconds, but damage can break this early. Psychic Scream is primarily used as an AoE interrupt in dungeons.
• Shackle Undead is not entirely useless in Battle for Azeroth because there are a large amount of Undead mobs in some of the dungeons. You have the option to Crowd Control them as Discipline if needed.
• Shining Force can be rather beneficial to deal with the Necrotic and Sanguine affixes, due to the requirement of knocking back and slowing enemies. You can find more on these affixes below.

2. Mythic+ Talents for Discipline Priests

Below are the suggested talents for Mythic+. These talents are recommended for all groups and keys at the current time.

Level	Choices
15	✗ Castigation	? Twist of Fate	✓ Schism
30	✗ Body and Soul	? Masochism	✓ Angelic Feather
45	✗ Shield Discipline	? Mindbender	✓ Power Word: Solace
60	? Psychic Voice	? Dominant Mind	? Shining Force
75	✓ Sins of the Many	✗ Contrition	✓ Shadow Covenant
90	? Purge the Wicked	✓ Divine Star	✓ Halo
100	✓ Lenience	? Luminous Barrier	✗ Evangelism

3. Trinkets

Trinket recommendations for Battle for Azeroth Mythic+ dungeons will be located here. Currently, we are unsure of any tuning that will take place between beta and launch for trinkets, thus we are uncomfortable making a recommendation. “Stat sticks” (trinkets providing a flat stat) will be valuable early on in the expansion. Also keep in mind that damage trinkets no longer provide Atonement healing, but now do full damage, instead of a reduced 25% for Discipline Priests, which will have an impact on dungeons where damage is necessary.

4. Mythic+ Affixes

The way Mythic+ affixes are tiered in Battle for Azeroth has changed quite a bit since their launch in Legion.

There are now three weekly affixes and one seasonal affix. The first affix is available instantly at level two and three, the second affix starts at level four, the third affix is enabled at level seven, and finally the seasonal affix is at level ten.

4.1. Tier One Affixes

Fortified - Non-boss enemies have 20% more health and inflict up to 30% increased damage. Focus on helping provide damage during trash packs and try to learn which packs need your attention more than others. Certain enemies have buffs that need to be dispelled. You can use Mind Control for specific enemies to buff your allies. You could even talent into something like Dominant Mind to control an enemy without sacrificing your ability to heal. The goal with Fortified is to focus on as much crowd control as possible. Having healing cooldowns ready and available for trash packs will prove beneficial.

Tyrannical - Boss enemies have 40% more health and inflict up to 15% increased damage. Discipline AoE is rather limited, but our single target damage is quite high. On most dungeon boss encounters, we will be able to focus heavy damage on the boss, while still healing our group. It is usually recommended to go for a more aggressive build, running Schism, Power Word: Solace and Sins of the Many to maximize your damage and thus your healing. The importance of quickly killing bosses on Tyrannical is high, and Discipline brings quite a few tools to the table to help with that.

4.2. Tier Two Affixes

Bolstering - When any non-boss enemy dies, its death cry empowers nearby allies, increasing their maximum health and damage by 20%. This has a 30 yard range. There really is not much you can do to help besides switching targets to help damage higher health enemies. If you get 1-2 highly bolstered enemies, be ready to cast Pain Suppression or even Rapture / Power Word: Barrier if it is needed.

Raging - Non-boss enemies enrage at 30% health remaining, dealing 100% increased damage until defeated. Conversely to Bolstering, you would want to help damage down specific enemies one at a time to avoid the increased damage done and reduce the healing required on your team. If for some reason the pack is AoE’d down and you have several low health enemies, be ready to use your cooldowns such as Pain Suppression, Rapture or Power Word: Barrier to counter the damage.

Sanguine - When slain, non-boss enemies leave behind a lingering pool of ichor that heals their allies and damages players. The pools left on the ground have two specific issues that need to be dealt with. Firstly, and the most obvious, is your group members (specifically melee DPS) taking damage after killing an enemy; be ready to spot heal these players up quickly. Secondly, enemies that are casting might stand in these pools, which will heal them. It is highly recommended to talent into Shining Force for this affix to ensure that you can knock the enemies back out of the pools and reduce the additional time it takes to kill them.

Teeming - Additional non-boss enemies are present throughout the dungeon. Extra crowd control might be needed depending on the other affixes ( Fortified makes this much harder to deal with). Depending on the additional enemies that are added, there may be more party-wide damage or single target damage, so be ready to adjust based on the circumstances.

Bursting - When slain, non-boss enemies explode, causing all players to suffer 10% of their max health in damage over 4 sec (this effect stacks). Bursting is likely one of the more difficult affixes to handle for a newer Discipline Priest. With a target, Bursting stacks are rather manageable, however, issues usually arise when healing your party after several enemies have died and you have no more targets. Thankfully, we have several tools to deal with healing out of combat in Battle for Azeroth. Because of the way Mastery: Grace works, Power Word: Radiance should be the first spell you start off using followed by any of the following, as needed: Rapture, Power Word: Barrier, Luminous Barrier (if taken), defensive Penance (if talented into Contrition) and casting Shadow Mend on single targets that require some spot healing.

4.3. Tier Three Affixes

Necrotic - All enemies' melee attacks apply a stacking blight that inflicts damage over time and reduces healing received. Healing your target after they get somewhere between 10-15 stacks of the debuff becomes nearly impossible. Each stack of the Necrotic Rot debuff accounts for 2% less healing taken. At 10-15 stacks, your healing is reduced by 20-30% and the effectiveness of healing versus working on helping the tank drop stacks swaps. Focus on DPSing to kill the enemy rather than trying to heal the tank. Keep in mind that your absorbs will be limited in effectiveness by this debuff, as well. Pain Suppression is helpful in preventing a death, since damage reductions are not impacted by this affix. Shining Force is extremely helpful in providing a knockback when the tank is attempting to drop the stacks of the debuff. Leap of Faith is worth considering to pull the tank away from the enemies, helping to drop his stacks. The good news is, Necrotic Rot stacks will drop automatically once you leave combat.

Skittish - Enemies pay far less attention to threat generated by tanks. Because of threat dropping from the tank, it is important that you maintain a focus on specifically healing melee DPS in your group. Maintaining Atonement on both your tank and the 1 or 2 melee DPS in the group is advised so that you can quickly provide increased spot healing (since Mastery: Grace buffs your healing on targets with Atonement).

Volcanic - While in combat, enemies periodically cause gouts of flame to erupt beneath the feet of distant players. This affix is fairly easy to avoid as a Discipline Priest, due to our ability to heal on the move. The issue you will run into here is when other players are getting hit frequently by the ability. Make sure to be ready to top off those who get hit quickly to avoid extra deaths.

Explosive - While in combat, enemies periodically summon Explosive Orbs that will detonate if not destroyed. We can actually help quite a bit with this affix, given our ability to provide damage. If you are running Power Word: Solace, you can help kill the orb quickly with an instant cast ability. It is recommended to keep an eye out for these orbs and break away from healing to help destroy them, if it is needed.

Quaking - Periodically, all players emit a shockwave, inflicting damage and interrupting nearby allies. This affix can be somewhat annoying due to the spread requirement and interrupt on your casts. Be sure to not be casting when this ability finishes to avoid being spell locked. If players are stacked when this goes off, you may have to follow up with some quick healing to top off the group.

Grievous - When injured below 90% health, players will suffer increasing damage over time until healed above 90% health. Grievous is definitely one of, if not the hardest affix for Discipline to handle, but it is not impossible. The lack of an out of combat burst heal can make topping players off who have high stacks of this debuff rather difficult, especially in higher keys, where damage during combat is higher. Similar to the issues with Bursting, when we exit combat and no longer have targets to attack, it is much harder for us to top everyone off. The best method to handle this affix is to focus on keeping people topped off in combat by keeping up as many Atonements as possible, while still dealing damage. Doing this will prevent you from being in too big of a hole when you exit combat and allow you to top people off. If you get in a situation where you have multiple people with high stacks of Grievous and are struggling to top them off, be sure to use Rapture and Power Word: Barrier to mitigate some of the damage and help you recover. Talenting into Shadow Covenant may also seem to be worth considering, however, you will sacrifice damage in the process of doing so (by not being talented into Sins of the Many) and could also make healing those players up even harder due to the healing absorb left over by Shadow Covenant.

4.4. Seasonal Affix

Reaping is the seasonal affix for Patch 8.1 in Battle for Azeroth. Every 20% on the Enemy forces bar, Bwonsamdi will resurrect spirits of all the trash creatures you had killed up to that point and they will charge at you no matter where you are at. This happens a total of 5 times per dungeon. You will be in full control of when this occurs, so planning/adjusting your pulls will be crucial.

Discipline being strong in single target damage means we can help focus down the infected enemies and Spawns of G’huun. The Spawn of G’huun can be crowd controlled, meaning we should be able to use a Shining Force to help knock it back from other enemies and provide a slow, or use Psychic Scream to fear them.

5. Mythic+ Azerite Traits

For Mythic+ content, it is recommended to focus on damage-specific traits as they will provide you with the most benefit over healing focused traits. Because of the timer mechanic, providing added damage as a healer is much more important that increasing healing throughput that can be sufficient without traits. Damage traits will provide 100% of their damage but will not translate to Atonement healing , so keep this in mind. Below are the top traits we would recommend:

1. Thunderous Blast gives your damaging abilities a chance blast the target for extra Nature damage, and cause the target to take 20% more damage from your next blast. When the bonus damage reaches 100%, the next blast will Critically Strike, and reset the bonus damage back to 0%.
2. Rezan's Fury causes your damaging abilities to have a chance to summon a Child of Rezan, which deals Physical damage to your target and causes them to bleed for additional damage over 12 seconds.
3. Dagger in the Back gives your abilities a chance to shoot a dagger at your target, applying a damage over time effect for 12 seconds, stacking up to 4 times. If you shoot this dagger when behind the target, it will apply 2 stacks.
4. Gift of Forgiveness increases the damage of your Smite if you have at least 3 Atonements active. Since you will normally have at least 3 Atonements out in both dungeons and raids, and it provides a substantial damage increase to Smite, this trait is rather valuable.
5. Enduring Luminescence buffs Power Word: Radiance to provide additional healing, as well as increasing the duration of your resulting Atonements to 70% of their normal duration (up from 60%). This trait may fare well on certain encounters over others, but it is definitely a recommended choice.
6. Blood Rite causes your spells to have a chance to increase your Haste for 15 seconds. Killing enemies refreshes this effect.
7. Unstable Catalyst causes your spells and abilities to have a chance to create a zone standing in which increases your primary stat.

6. Changelog